Paper Illusions

In this how-to video, you will learn how to make an animated optical illusion with paper. First, start off with one ball and copy it five more times so that it goes in a line to the corner. Make sure there are six balls in total. Next, create a striped pattern shown. There are ...more

Are you interested in selling your products at the local Farmers Markets? Many small mom and pop food crafters get started selling their artisan breads, homemade cakes, cookies, pies, biscotti, candy, seasoning mixes or regional barbecue sauces direct to customers who visit lo ...more

Create your own head turning magic by creating the easy to make paper toy in this how-to video. Make two paper dunce caps, cut out face holes, and stick the prop onto an assistant for this trick. Spinning the paper hats around creates a creepy illusion that the assistant's hea ...more

You can learn a magic trick that will make an empty can full again, just watch this how-to video. You need a can of soda, piece of paper, black texta, scissors, and a marker. You trim the paper to best fit the can's mouth, insert a hole behind the can's mouth, and squeeze abou ...more

Your name doesn't have to be Martha Stewart in order for you to craft something beautiful for your amor on Valentine's Day. In fact, all you need to know is a few basic origami folding skills. Take a look at this origami folding video to learn how to build a simple spring peo ...more

This is one water bomb that's more postmodern art than scary - though fun - splashy summertime weapon. Using intricate tessellated origami folds and a drawn-on grid you'll learn how to create this interesting shape. The resulting shape can be modified; you can scrunch it toge ...more

Grand Illusions is a site for the enquiring mind. This how to video demonstrates how to make Japanese origami tumblers. Your wonderful & charming host represents Grand Illusions, an amazing toy, magic & illusion web shop and gallery. Description from the amazing Grand Illusio ...more

This is quite the trick. By making a couple loose folds into a dollar bill, and a few strategic placements of paper clips, it's possible to link two paper clips together! This is just a magic trick that appears to magically link the two paper clips together, a mere illusion, b ...more

Watch this instructional origami video to fold an origami sailboat. This origami boat is folded and designed by Joost Langeveld. This instructor paints the origami paper to enhance the visual illusion. He holds the origami paper in front of several completed examples of the or ...more

Watch this instructional origami video on how to make an origami snowdrop, folded and designed by Joost Langeveld. The flower of this snowdrop plant should be folded from a triangular piece of paper. The snowdrop flowers in the background serve as ready inspiration for this ti ...more

You can learn how to do magic with paper. You will be able to create the illusion of disappearing paper. You tear a piece of paper in half, roll the pieces into balls, and then hide them in your hands.

Learn how to make a three dimensional city from a sheet of paper. Start with a flat drawing of a city scape and a sharp X-acto knife. Cut along each vertical line of each window. Cut along each horizontal line of each window. Be very precise and do not cut past the end of the ...more

Learn some free magic tricks with Cameron. You can learn some of the worlds best magic tricks from Cameron Oelsen, an amateur magician who loves to share the tricks behind his tricks. Watch this video tutorial to learn how to perform a paper magic trick. Is it an illusion, sl ...more

Paper Donut is a collaborative graffiti project between Justine Ricaud and Alexis Facca. The French duo paint geometrical illusions as urban art (with the exception of the gallery installation below). They've also posted some detail shots that give you some sense of how it was ...more

Learning how to draw is a very much about learning how to see. Watch this instructional drawing video to begin to draw the illusion of depth on a flat surface. Most people can see perfectly fine and understand the concept of depth in space. However, drawing becomes tricky when ...more

Kipkay demonstrates how to make a penrose triangle, an impossible object, out of paper. This is a very well known optical illusion in three dimensions. Make a penrose triangle. Click through to watch this video on videojug.com

Pioneered by Rufus Butler Seder in his popular children's picture book Gallop!, and ably demonstrated by WonderHowTo favorite brusspup in the video below, "scanimation" refers to a novel (but distinctly old-timey) technique for cramming multi-frame animations onto a single she ...more

Happy weekend! Time to relax and waste time. If you're a child at heart, or you've got a couple young ones hanging around, treat them to these old-school magic tricks, courtesy of Flickr user Jordan Smith. Smith generously scanned and uploaded a selection of cards from a postc ...more

You don't have to go the boring route with Christmas lights this year. Try hacking them, or better yet see if you can replicate this Tron-themed optical illusion made by WonderHowTo favorite Brusspup. Good luck... looks like it took some serious time and patience to get it rig ...more

WonderHowTo favorite brusspup demonstrates an amazingly simple coin trick with a plastic hanger and a quarter. In fact, it seems almost too simple to be real. Scrounge for a hanger and quarter and try it yourself, then comment below. More from brusspup: Truly Impressive Fire ...more

At first glance, this drawing looks like nothing special, just an odd design of lines, but then you notice the two bolded lines. They look like they are different sizes, but are they? No! They are the exact same length. Tricky… very tricky. To learn how to create this optical ...more

This video starts off with a neat optical illusion that he uses to demonstrate the effectiveness of force card tricks. He shows a piece of paper with "Paris in the the spring" written on it, most people's mind will skip over the second "the" and will read it, "Paris in the spr ...more

Optical illusions don't require fancy techniques; this one relies entirely in the details. Gather up a pen/pencil, paper, and a pair of scissors. Draw a parallelogram to be used as the template for both tabletops in this sketch. By varied angling, leg lengths, and color, the t ...more

Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more

What if I told you that you could read minds? You'd most likely think I was crazy, and you'd be right. But what I really meant is that you could make people think that you could read minds, something that's not the least bit crazy. Performing mind reading — and it is a perfor ...more

Whereas yesterday's segment of Making Art on Your iOS Device focused on the technical elements of drawing from life, today we enter the painterly realm of David Hockney and Jorge Colombo. The apps below can be categorized under "painting"—or more accurately, the digital creat ...more

Sponge balls are a very cool magic effect. But you will have to master palming first. You will get very good reactions. The best part is that you can simply keep them in your pocket. Here is how to start. Palming Begin by pretending to put a ball in one hand while secretly k ...more

The stunt is not simple. FOLLOWING THIS IS A NO AIRPLANE VERSION, and you do not need to get your freinds drunk in the no airplane version you need to get them into the fake house and using the fake bathroom. etc. Real Airplane Version step 1 and 2 Step 1 Part 1 Rent a F ...more

This video shows you how to construct a miniature Ames Room from a layout using paper. An Ames room is a distorted room that gives the optical illusion of depth, distance and varying size. Setups like this were used in 'The Lord of the Rings' movies. Video: .

YouTube illusionist Brusspup has used everything from mirrors to fire to create his optical illusions, but his latest trick is a little more 2D. Using a printer, a transparency sheet and a piece of regular paper, he made several illusions that trick your brain into thinking th ...more

Eventually, even the most private company has to file its patents and unveil its tightly-held secrets, and Magic Leap is no exception. The US Patent and Trademark Office recently published a treasure trove of Magic Leap patent applications that appear to provide more details ...more

It may be surprising, but those cardboard toilet paper tubes are dead useful for so many things besides just keeping the circular shape of your TP roll. As shown before, you can make car dash mounts for your mobile phone, but that's just one of the many beneficial uses from a ...more

You may or may not care about this, but sometimes it physically upsets me when I see gears stuck together haphazardly, with no concern for whether their teeth interlock. I mean, what do you do with non-interlocking gears? So when I sat down to design a paper chain of gears, I ...more

A vulnerability in the design of LiDAR components in driverless cars is far worse than anything we've seen yet outside of the CAN bus sphere — with a potentially deadly consequence if exploited. The hack is also going to be hard to fix, researchers Hocheol Shin, Dohyun Kim, Y ...more

Chestnuts are roasting on an open fire, which can only mean one thing: Christmas is nearly here. It's the time of year we're supposed to spend with family and friends, but usually we spend it stressing out over what to buy everyone on our list without going over budget, or sho ...more

Karen Gillan must have had an absolute blast chewing the scenery as Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, seeing as how Nebula is a ball of pure, seething fury pretty much 24/7. Combine that larger-than-life personality with her iconic blue and silver cyborg look, and you ...more

You know Moana's a rock-solid pick for Halloween this year. The question is, how far will you go to become Moana? Are you going to just slap on a cream skirt and a red bandeau? Or do you want to go all out and end up with the finished product like YouTuber Gladzy Kei did? Alre ...more

A deck of cards may be a magician's best way to demonstrate his or her's sleight of hand, but for the prankster, it's the perfect way to deliver a shocking 300 volts of electricity! And that's exactly what I'm going to show you how to do today. Stuart Edge used it in his "Elec ...more

I've been playing around with iOS 7 for a while now, and for the most part, I dig it. It's a nice update for a stale OS, and there are a lot of great new features. But like any good piece of tech, there are a few things to be disliked. Some of these are big issues, and some co ...more